MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--Nov. 20, 2013: The lithium-ion battery market has
continued to evolve with emphasis on extremely long life, scalability, low
cost/kWh, 100 percent safe high energy density and high efficiency. The
lithium-ion battery market has shown huge potential with its use in
consumer, industrial, automotive and renewable energy/grid storage
applications.

"The market is likely to grow at 23.8 percent compound annually from
2014 to 2020," said Vishal Sapru, Research Manager, Energy & Environment at
Frost & Sullivan. "The applications driving this market include renewable
energy/grid storage growing at 57 percent, followed by automotive growing
at 36 percent respectively. The consumer and industrial segment will grow
at 8 percent and 14 percent respectively."

A lot of investment is being done to improve the overall performance of
a lithium-ion battery. Keeping this in mind, researchers at Stanford and
the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have developed a self-healing
battery electrode that is likely to provide greater charge capacity in
lithium-ion batteries. Silicon has been seen as a potential battery
electrode material for quite some time now- its capability of holding large
amounts of energy while the battery charges- leads to extend life. The only
major concern is that silicon electrodes expand while being charged and
contract when electrons are released causing them to stress and crack from
this expansion. This concern can be fixed by coating silicon electrodes
with this new self-healing polymer. This polymer also cracks like silicon
while expanding but broken bonds of polymer attract one another and return
back to its original shape. This coating will enable silicone to expand
without cracking thus enabling it to store more energy.

This technology seems to be working with smaller charge/discharge cycles
but still requires further testing to reach charge discharge cycles
required for smart phones and electric vehicles. This could be a disruptive
technology which can increase the use of lithium-ion batteries and continue
to support its strong demand.